We actually did it: No Borders Calais organised a successful week-long music festival in Calais (6-12 September 2010), one of the shittest towns in Europe, in the teeth of the French police and the local authorities, with no publicity at all, a few hundred euros, and little of what you could call organisation. And some of us say it was just about the best party we've ever been to.

Every day people in the UK are subjected to surveillance and borders. We are followed by CCTV, we leave electronic footprints when we use bankcards or search online, and we need to present the right papers to access “public” services. This is all designed to control us and prevent freedom of movement. Technology that was pioneered at national frontiers, such as drones, is now used to monitor protests.

On Wednesday 29th September, an international demonstration took place in Brussels against the new European directives on economic austerity. According to our estimates 300 participants of the No Border Camp, which is taking place throughout the week in Brussels, were arrested preventatively at different locations in the city, on their way to the demonstration. A group of Brussels lawyers have prepared a complaint which is being delivered on Friday, demanding that free expression of opinion must be respected as a democratic right.

Iraqi refugees have were assaulted by British security guards contracted by the UK Border Agency and Iraqi police on the mass deportation flight that left London for Baghdad on Monday night carrying more than sixty people.

The International Federation of Iraqi Refugees has seen photographs of the injuries inflicted and will be making a formal complaint to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).